Sleep . . .

She had been whimpering.

She must have been thrashing, too, because she found herself being held in a gentle embrace, staring up through the darkness at questioning eyes.  She loved those eyes, light brown, like honey.  Although right now they looked black.  “I’m fine.  Sorry I woke you up,” she signed to the glance.  Her husband looked at her with concern.  “It was just a nightmare,” she added as a reassurance.  He nodded and laid back down beside her.  Heather turned her head until it once again faced upward and closed her eyes. 

The muscles on her face prickled as a delightful sensation rushed across her body.  The muscles on the rest of her body instantly relaxed.  She loved it when Brendan did this for her.  He would ever-so-softly run his finger along her face, along her forehead, her cheeks, her nose.  It felt like a piece of heaven kissing her face, like an angel had come to help her sleep.

Sleep . . . Brendan’s eloquent fingers seemed to say.  Do not be afraid.

With a contented sigh, she began to fall back asleep.  She stiffened.  She was in the same house again, with same window . . . again.  Against her better judgment, she looked through the glass.  Faintly at first, but with a sudden flash of luminescence, the eyes stared back.  Those eyes.  She hated these eyes as much as she loved her husband’s.  Where Brendan’s eyes were honey-colored, these were a pale green, toxic as . . . as . . . metaphors failed her.  She backed away from the window, staying focused on the horrifying eyes.  She had seen these eyes in many dreams before, and they always belonged to some creature of darkness, man or beast.  Sometimes they came as a panther, as a demon-cat, as a man, as a wolf.  The shapes changed around the ever-constant eyes.

Today they eyes had chosen a panther.  It climbed in through the window, writhing sinuously, putting one dangerously silent paw in front of the other.  It wouldn’t leap.  It never did.  It just followed her.  It always followed, watching.  But who was watching?  Somebody with toxic green eyes.

She went downstairs, where a masquerade party seemed to have been occurring.  The eyes stopped at the top of the stairs, silent and menacing.  She mingled, using her hands as her mask.  Perhaps in this crowd she could escape the eyes.

A man tugged at her arm; he wanted to dance.  She signed to him, “I can’t dance.”  He pulled insistently, she turned to look at his eyes and pulled back.  Green.  The man’s grip tightened and she saw too late his black mask and inky clothes.  He began to drag her toward the stairs . . . again, toward the panther.  She jerked away, but he pulled her into his dark embrace and carried her.  The darkness covered her eyes.  She tried to scream, tried struggle, but her body would not respond.  She couldn’t move, and she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t even squeak.  She strained against the frozen muscles of her body, willed them to move.

And suddenly, an angel kissed her--softly, on her forehead, on her cheeks, on her nose.  Do not be afraid, he said.  She opened her eyes and saw, in the dim morning light, those golden eyes looking down at her.

She had been whimpering.

She smiled.  You kissed me, she mouthed.  He nodded.  You saved me.